Your current issue offers much on Georgia, including the main leader (“Russia Resurgent,” August 16, 2008), and a three-page briefing on the recent conflict (“A Scripted War”), but most of the really interesting stuff is in a small box on Caucasian pipelines (“The Dangers of the Safe Route”). Here we see what the war in Georgia is really about. Together with Armenia and Azerbaijan, Georgia is on the path of the so-called fourth corridor through South Caucasus, which skirts both Russia and Iran. With Turkey’s help, this corridor is supposed to save Europe from dependence on Russian oil and gas. Or this is how you present the matter, lumping Europe and America under the innocuous term “West.” Another reading is that Russia and America are competing for the lucrative European market, and that Russia has just shown its teeth regarding the fraught fourth corridor. In this interpretation, Europe is but a passive if massive market rather than a player in the big oil and gas game. Judging from all the evidence we have about European rôle in world affairs, this alternative reading is much closer to mark.